This Weekend’s Declutter: The Office Nook

Last weekend I tackled my spare bedroom to cross the entire upstairs off my list to declutter before my move in January. This weekend we tackled the office, which was my second most feared room after the spare bedroom. This being simply because there had been a lot of stuff accumulating in this area and I was dreading having to go through it. Let’s dive right in shall we?

The office nook is located directly off my living room and contains an empty bookshelf which has just been a magnet for homeless stuff, and a built in desk and shelving. We’ll start with the bookshelf. Enjoy:

The Bookshelf

That’s a lot of random crap.

Here’s what you’re looking at:

The dog crate my Mom’s dog sleeps in when I dog sit, which never gets back to it’s home in the basement.

A random basket I once bought for storing blankets in the living room that was too small.

Board games

Some books that wouldn’t fit in our built-in bookshelves in the dining room.

Our DVD collection (those black binders)

Cat toys

Random wine making utensils (my husband brews our wine in this nook)

We tackled this part of the room together. The random basket is now in the entryway and is home to Molly’s various collars, leashes, harnesses, toys and coats. The cat stuff was relocated to the entryway as well (I have plans to centralize all cat stuff in one basket eventually). The wine stuff joined its brethren upstairs the new designated place for wine stuff: the spare bedroom closet.

The games needed to be assessed, so they got lugged out into the middle of the room so we could assess what we had actually played in the past year. Anything that hadn’t been played got put into a box that I’ll be donating to charity this week, and the remaining games were relocated to the spare bedroom closet (top shelf). The books got put over by the built-in bookshelf in the dining room, and the dog crate stayed because I happened to be dog sitting this weekend (cue pic of cute dogs):

Aww who’s a cute puppy?

And with that, the bookshelf was decluttered:

So beautifully empty!

Right about now you’re probably wondering why I have an empty bookshelf in my house, and that’s because there is built-in shelving in the dining room, but when we move, we’ll be forfeiting this built-in storage and returning our books to the original bookshelf. So while it’s empty for now, it won’t be when we move.

The Desk + Built Ins

Next up is the other side of the nook, which contains our desk and a bunch of built-in shelves. Prepare yourself for a whole lot of yellow pine:

Feast your eyes upon the mess.

I actually really like this desk because I was dreading having to buy one before we moved. Having the built-in desk means this office space cost me $0, even the chair was a curb-side rescue. Here’s what you’re looking at:

Even more board games on the top shelves.

Various office files, some coffee table books, some old text books, my camera bag, and a catch all basket that acts as our junk drawer.

A wine kit underway there on the left – it has to stay elevated for the inevitable racking.

A whole lotta crap from our room and the spare bedroom, along with several months worth of papers, cards, flyers, and other foolishness that should be dealt with as soon as it enters your home.

A pair of walkie-talkies that we discovered in the spare bedroom last weekend and are charging for our emergency preparedness kit.

Most of the stuff on the desk was mine, so I handled that while my husband re-organized the shelving. Old textbooks were banished to my on-site work office, the board games were either put in the charity box or moved upstairs, and the office stuff was re-organized to be neater.

Meanwhile I sorted through several months of unfilled paperwork and accumulated almost a whole garbage bag full of recyclable material. Things that hadn’t been properly stored were moved to their appropriate drawers, and I even designated a spot for all manuals and product warranties (woot!).

I dealt with those ugly wires on the right by moving them to the other side of the desk and running the cords through a pre-drilled hole in the desktop and down underneath to a power bar. Little solutions like that are so easy to implement if you just sit down and take the time to do it.

Here is the final result.

A desk I can actually work at.

The wine kit has to stay because disturbing it will stir up sediment (you do NOT want sediment in your wine) but everything else is looking much better, we even opened up a bunch of space on those shelves for extra storage if we need it. I’m happy I’ve got a space back that I can actually work at. It’s great!

As you can see, it was getting dark by the time we finished up, but the whole declutter only took about 2 hours. In fact, I still had time that day to carve a pumpkin, blog, make pumpkin soup and toast pumpkin seeds. I think this whole tackling one room a week is a great way to spread the decluttering process out and keep from getting overwhelmed. Now I have some textbooks to take to work and put on my work bookshelf, a bag of recyclable paper to take out to the garbage and a box full of games to take to goodwill:

The games that didn’t make the cut.

So now that week 4 of my decluttering binge is complete, here’s my progress:

This is going to make moving so much easier!
I have so much I need to go through. I’ve been making small progress, but not enough to tackle the problem. Perhaps like Aleksandra, I’ll tackle my closet this weekend. Then to the paper. I have so much! This is where you picture me sitting the middle of a mountain of paper! 😉

That was me last weekend, that desk had soooo much paper on it. It was surprisingly easy to tackle though, because it all goes into one of two piles: recycle or file.

Trista

I moved at the beginning of the month and didn’t have time to declutter so I moved everything. Thursday night I did a purge of a number of things that didn’t find a home right away at the new place. I’m also planning to take another pass at my books and movies before I drop everything off at goodwill.

Trista

And… I just wanted to say that your house is beautiful. Everything looks so nice when it’s clean and organized.

Wow! A lot of progress again. Great job! I need to get back at it myself… Lots of clutter so little time. Sigh!

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